Alberta built a record for a migration wave that has since receded, and rents show it first

2023 · the wave

More people arrived than at any time on record, then the wave shrank back without stopping

In a single quarter, the third quarter of 2023, net migration reached 57,761 people, of whom 41,247 came from outside Canada. The next-highest quarter in the record, the first quarter of 2024 at 50,650, belongs to the same wave. Alberta has always run on migration, and the shape of the rest of this chart is the shape of the province's economy: people arrive when there is work and leave when there isn't.

Both sources then fell. Between 2023 and 2025 the international component went from 140,950 to 52,897 (−62%), and interprovincial migration, Canadians moving to Alberta from other provinces, went from 44,363 to 21,387 (−52%). In the first half of 2026 the two were close to equal: 12,112 from other provinces and 12,333 from other countries.

In the second quarter of 2026, the latest on record, net migration was 16,663: 5,893 from other provinces and 10,770 from other countries. That international figure is 13,647 immigrants, less 1,249 net emigration, less a 1,628 fall in the non-permanent-residentNon-permanent residents. People living in Canada on a work permit, study permit, or similar temporary status, plus their families. They are counted in the population and they occupy housing. A federal policy change that shrinks this population shows up as a negative number in the migration accounts even when immigration itself is unchanged. population. That population is still shrinking, but no longer by enough to outweigh immigration.

These figures were revised in September. Statistics Canada's 23 September 2026 release revised every quarter from the third quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2026. It raised 2025 net international migration to Alberta from 19,138 to 52,897, and total net migration from 41,354 to 74,284, and it moved the first quarter of 2026 from a negative international figure to a positive one.

Two quarters in the record show a negative international figure: Q4 2010 and Q3 2020. Alberta's population was 5,101,050 on 1 July 2026, 1.5% more than a year earlier.

1948–2026 · the response

Alberta answered with the largest building year it has ever had

In 2025 Alberta started 53,184 homes, beating the previous record of 46,632, set the year before, by 14.1%. Against the low of 2016 it is 135% more building. Behind that number sit 79 years of Alberta housing startsHousing start. A dwelling counted at the moment its foundation is begun — not when the permit is issued, and not when anyone moves in. It is a measure of construction beginning, which is why it says nothing directly about how much housing exists yet., every year CMHC has counted them, and a province that has built in waves: the late-1970s boom, the collapse through the 1980s, the long climb to the 2006 peak of 40,882 homes, the bust after it.

Adjusted for the province it serves, 2025 works out to 10.6 homes started per thousand Albertans, against an average population of 5,011,819 that year.

The last bar is nine months, not a year. 2026 is drawn hollow because it runs only to September 2026. Against the same nine months of 2025, 35,560 starts against 40,714, building is running −12.7%, and it is still the second-highest January–September total on record, behind only 2025. Alberta building is strongly seasonal, so part-year totals can only be read against the same months of another year.

Demand and supply, same axis

Demand peaked first, and supply peaked two years later

Put the two series on one scale, each indexed so that its own 2010–2019 average equals 100, and they move together for two decades, because builders respond to the market they can see. Then migration goes somewhere the starts line cannot follow: in 2023 demand stood at 424 against its decade norm while starts were at 124.

Starts peaked in 2025, two years after migration peaked in 2023. By then demand stood at 170 on the same index, still above its own decade average, and supply at 187, 17 points ahead of it. An index cannot say how many homes that gap is worth. The next section measures it in people.

Each line is divided by its own average across the 2010s, because two series in different units need a common baseline and a single base year is a poor one for a series as volatile as Alberta migration. The shapes are the data; the vertical distance between the lines depends on that choice and is not a housing shortfall in units. The 2026 part-year is excluded.

The work already committed is still finishing. In Calgary and Edmonton together, 44,746 dwellings were under constructionUnder construction. Dwellings started but not yet finished — the work in progress. It is the clearest available preview of what will complete over the coming year, because these units are already committed: the foundations are in and the money is spent. in September 2026: at the completion pace of 2025, about 12 months of work. Those two cities completed 43,496 homes in 2025, against 29,087 in 2023; in the first nine months of 2026 completions are running −4.5% against the same months of 2025.

Calgary and Edmonton only. No Statistics Canada or CMHC table publishes this series for Alberta as a province. These two metropolitan areas hold about 70% of Alberta's people, which makes them a reasonable proxy and not a provincial total.

2000/01–2025/26 · homes per person added

In the latest year, Alberta started more homes than its population growth calls for

Between July 2025 and July 2026, Alberta added 76,419 people and started 47,359 homes: one home for every 1.61 people. Through the 2010s the average was 2.38. At the height of the wave, in 2022/23, it was 5.38.

1.61 is the lowest reading since 2000/01 apart from 2020/21 (0.88), the year the pandemic closed the border, and below every year of the 2015–17 bust, when the lowest was 1.64 in 2016/17.

That is one year's flow. The stock is a different question. Across the five years from July 2021 to July 2026 the population grew by 669,519 and builders started 209,034 homes, 3.20 people per start. At the 2010s ratio, that growth would have called for about 281,000 starts, roughly 72,000 more than were begun. On that count, the province has not yet built what the wave asked of it. By city the answer differs: CMHC's Fall 2026 Housing Supply Report finds no measurable supply gap in Edmonton and a remaining one in Calgary.

Starts count centres of 10,000 and over, while population counts the whole province, so every ratio here runs a little high and the cumulative shortfall a little large.

2016–2025 · the mix

What got built was not what Alberta usually builds

Alberta is a province of detached houses, and for most of the last forty years its building record looked like it. The record year does not. Apartments and other multi-unit types were 50% of everything started in 2025, 26,572 of 53,184 units, against 30% in 2016. Single-detached houses fell from 44% of starts to 28%.

Detached-house building did not stall while apartments took off. Single-detached starts rose 51.3% between 2016 and 2025, from 10,010 homes to 15,146. Apartments grew far faster, 297.6% over the same nine years, which is what moves a share. The one year detached building fell was the last one: −3.5% from 2024 to 2025, while apartments rose another 29.1%.

Even after nine years of growth, 2025's 15,146 single-detached starts remain 39.1% below Alberta's all-time detached peak of 24,850 in 2006.

Apartments taking half a year's starts has happened before, in 1968, 1969 and 1982, and the last time apartments were at least half of Alberta's starts was 1982. What is new is the scale underneath the share.

Both charts cover only the years that carry a dwelling-type breakdown, which begins in 1959. The 11 earlier years, 1948 to 1958, have a total but no split. Shares are computed against the sum of the four published types, because in three years of the 1960s the published types do not add exactly to the published total.

1988–2025 · intended market

A province of homeowners started building rental at scale

Dwelling type gives the shape of a building, not who it was meant for. A separate CMHC series records the intended marketIntended market. What a builder says a dwelling is for at the moment construction starts: purpose-built rental, condominium, or freehold homeowner. It is an intention recorded at the start, not a guarantee about what the unit becomes — projects do convert between rental and condo mid-build. at the moment construction starts: purpose-built rental, condominium, or freehold homeowner. On that measure the change is sharper than the type mix. In 2016, Alberta started 1,410 purpose-built rentalPurpose-built rental. An apartment building constructed to be rented, and owned as a single building by one landlord. Distinct from a condo building whose individual units are sold to owners, some of whom then rent them out. units, 7% of the three markets combined. In 2025 it started 19,224, or 38%, an increase of 1263%.

For most of the period this series covers, purpose-built rental was a small part of Alberta building: the private market built condos and houses, and rental supply came second-hand. In 2025 it was 19,224 rental starts against 10,022 condominium and 21,513 freehold homeowner. A large share of the record therefore lands in the segment the vacancy and rent surveys measure, which is where the next two sections look.

They sum to 50,759 against 53,184 starts in 2025, a shortfall of 2,425 units. Co-operative and “other market” categories exist in the source cube and are omitted because Alberta volumes are negligible, and this is a different table with a slightly different universe from the dwelling-type series above, so the two should never be subtracted from one another. Intended market is an intention recorded at the start; projects do convert between rental and condo mid-build.

2023–2025 · vacancy

The rental market went from nothing available to a normal amount, fast

In 2023, at the height of the arrival wave, 1.4% of Calgary's purpose-built rental stock was empty and available: the market of queues at viewings and applications sight-unseen. That figure is the vacancy rateVacancy rate. The share of purpose-built rental units sitting empty and available, measured once a year in an October survey. It is the price of housing expressed as availability rather than as dollars: when it rises, landlords compete for tenants instead of the other way round., the housing shortage expressed as availability rather than dollars. Two years later, in 2025, it was 4.9%, 3.5 times as high. Edmonton went from 2.3% to 3.8% over the same two surveys.

Alberta has been at these levels before and higher: Calgary's vacancy reached 7.0% in 2016, after the oil-price crash, and fell as low as 0.5% in 1997. What is unusual is the speed, and that it happened while the largest supply wave in the province's history was still completing. The October 2026 survey, due in December, is the next reading.

There are two vacancy rates, and both are shown. The solid lines are CMHC's row-and-apartment structures of three units and over, the primary series here. The dashed lines are apartment structures of six units and over, a different population of buildings, reaching back to 1971 where the primary series starts in 1992. In 2025 the six-plus universe puts Calgary at 5.0% against 4.9%, and at their widest in either city, in 1995, the two were 0.5 percentage points apart. Both exclude the secondary rental marketSecondary rental market. Housing rented out that was not built to be rental: condos bought by investors, basement suites, rented single-family houses. CMHC's rent and vacancy surveys exclude it entirely, and in Calgary it is large and growing — which is where much of the new condo supply lands.: rented condos and basement suites are in neither survey.

Calgary and Edmonton only. No Statistics Canada or CMHC table publishes this series for Alberta as a province. These two metropolitan areas hold about 70% of Alberta's people, which makes them a reasonable proxy and not a provincial total.

2021–2026 · rents

Rents rose hard for three years, and asking rents have now turned down

A two-bedroom apartment in Calgary averaged $1,355 a month in 2021 and $1,914 in 2025, 41.3% in four years. Alberta consumer prices rose 15.4% over the same period, so in constant 2025 dollarsReal and nominal. Nominal is the number as it was written on the cheque. Real restates it in one year's dollars so amounts from different years can be compared. Any rent or price change spanning more than a few years is misleading in nominal terms alone. the increase is 22.5%: still large, and roughly half the headline. Edmonton rose 26.2% nominally and 9.4% in real terms, from $1,270 to $1,603.

The slowdown is in the final year. Calgary rents rose 1.7% between 2024 and 2025, from $1,882 to $1,914, after three years of increases many times that. Edmonton's last year was 4.4%.

CMHC measures rents in occupied units of the existing purpose-built stock, once a year in October. Sitting tenants roll over slowly, so the series lags advertised rents at turning points, and it excludes the secondary rental market, which in Calgary is large and growing. Real figures use the Alberta all-items consumer price index, annual average, expressed in 2025 dollars.

Two newer series cover the months since that survey. Statistics Canada's asking-rentAsking rent and paid rent. Asking rent is what a landlord advertises a vacant unit for, so it is what a new tenant is offered. Paid rent is what tenants already in place are paying. Statistics Canada publishes both as experimental quarterly estimates; asking rents move first, because sitting tenants' rents only change at renewal. estimates record what landlords advertise to new tenants. In the second quarter of 2026 a two-bedroom apartment in Calgary was listed at $1,890 a month, 6.4% below $2,020 a year earlier and 12.1% below the Q2 2024 peak of $2,150. Tenants already in place paid $1,930 on average, so a new tenant is now offered less than a sitting one pays. In Edmonton the asking rent was $1,570, 2.5% lower than a year earlier and level with what sitting tenants pay.

These are experimental estimates. Paid rent here is a three-quarter moving average of what tenants pay, not the October survey above, and the two series should not be spliced. The asking series fits the lag described above: Calgary asking rents turned in 2024, while paid rents kept rising into 2026.

Calgary and Edmonton only. No Statistics Canada or CMHC table publishes this series for Alberta as a province. These two metropolitan areas hold about 70% of Alberta's people, which makes them a reasonable proxy and not a provincial total.

The consumer price index shows the same turn across the province. Alberta's rented-accommodation index rose −2.3% in the year to September 2026, down from 5.4% in January, while prices overall rose 3.6%. In real terms, rent is now falling.

The consumer price index covers all of Alberta, not only its two largest cities.

New-home prices

Calgary and Edmonton have spent twenty years going opposite directions

Both cities spiked in the 2006–07 boom, and then they parted. Edmonton peaked in October 2007 at 116.7 on the New Housing Price IndexNew Housing Price Index. Statistics Canada's index of what contractors charge for NEW homes — roughly a tenth of housing transactions. It is not the resale price a realtor would quote, and this page has no legally reusable resale series to show instead. and, 19 years later, sits at 105.7, 9.4% below that peak in nominal terms, before any adjustment for two decades of inflation. Calgary was flat for a decade after the same bust, then climbed from 2021 to a peak of 133.8 in February 2025, and has since eased 3.1% to 129.7.

That index is narrower than it sounds. It measures what contractors charge for newly built homes, roughly a tenth of housing transactions. It is not the resale price a realtor would quote, and the two authoritative resale series, CREA's MLS® HPI and the Teranet–National Bank HPI, both forbid commercial use and derivative works, so neither appears here.

Because the index is set to 100 in December 2016, the levels are themselves percentage changes since then: new homes in Calgary are 29.7% more expensive than in that base month, Edmonton 5.7%, and Canada as a whole 20.2%.

The index is quality-adjustedQuality-adjusted. Corrected so that changes in what is being built don't masquerade as changes in price. Without it, a year of larger houses with better finishes would show up as inflation rather than as a different product., so a year of larger houses does not read as inflation. It also tracks list prices rather than effective prices: a builder who holds the sticker price and adds thirty thousand dollars of upgrades appears here as flat while the effective price fell. In a soft market that bias runs one way.

House against lot

Is it the building that got expensive, or the ground under it?

In Calgary, mostly the building. The same index splits a new home's price into the building and the serviced lotLand only. The serviced-lot component of a new home's price inside an urban subdivision — the ground, graded, with water, sewer and road already run to it. It is not raw land, not farmland, and not an acreage: it says nothing about what a quarter-section outside town is worth. it stands on. In Calgary the building component stands at 136.0 against 118.7 for the lot, 36.0% and 18.7% respectively since December 2016. In Edmonton the two move nearly together, at 105.6 and 104.0, and neither has gone far.

“Land only” here is a builder's serviced lot, not a land market. It is the graded ground inside a new urban subdivision with water, sewer and road already run to it, a cost line in a new house's price and not the value of an acreage. No free, commercially licensed price series exists for raw land, farmland or acreages in Alberta. The NHPI 'Land only' component shipped here is a builder's serviced-lot cost inside a new urban subdivision — it says nothing about a quarter-section outside Airdrie. Farm Credit Canada's Farmland Values Report is the only plausible route and its reuse terms have not been verified.

The house end of the pipeline

Unsold new houses piled up to a record in April 2026 and have begun to clear

Unabsorbed inventoryUnabsorbed inventory. Newly completed homes that have not yet been sold or rented, counted at month end. In the Statistics Canada tables this covers single- and semi-detached houses only: there are no row or apartment units in it., the count of newly completed homes not yet sold or rented, looks like the natural test of a supply-lag story. It is a narrower test than it looks. In every month since 1988 the published total is exactly single-detached plus semi-detached houses: the series contains no row or apartment units at all. Row and apartment units were 64% of the 2025 record and purpose-built rental 38% of it, and none of that reaches this count.

For houses, the count rose to a record and has started to fall. In September 2026, 3,072 new houses stood finished and unsold across Calgary and Edmonton, 1,412 and 1,660 respectively, against 2,488 a year earlier, a rise of 23.5%. On the three-month average, the count reached 3,403 in April 2026, the highest since the series began in 1988, and has since eased 10.1% to 3,060. That is still 169% above the five-year low of 1,137 in May 2022, and the six months higher than the latest reading all fall in 2026.

The two cities have parted. Edmonton's average fell from 2,141 in April 2026 to 1,701, −20.6%. Calgary's rose to 1,360 in September 2026, its highest in two years.

Shown as a three-month rolling averageThree-month rolling average. Each month replaced by the average of itself and the two before it. It trades a little timeliness for a lot less noise, which is necessary for a series as small and jumpy as unsold new dwellings., because the raw monthly count is small and volatile. 1,173 newly completed houses were absorbedAbsorption. A newly completed home finding its first buyer or renter. Absorptions are the outflow from the unsold count; completions are the inflow. The count grows when completions run ahead of absorptions. Like the unsold count, the published series covers single- and semi-detached houses. in September 2026 alone, so the unsold stock is a few months of sales.

Calgary and Edmonton only. No Statistics Canada or CMHC table publishes this series for Alberta as a province. These two metropolitan areas hold about 70% of Alberta's people, which makes them a reasonable proxy and not a provincial total.

Testing the reading

What would break this reading, and what has been checked

Each line names a result that would contradict the reading at the top of this page, the measure used, and what the data show as of 2 November 2026. The first is the headline of the previous version, which this update replaces.

1. 1.

   “The people stopped coming” · Does not hold

   It fails if 2025 net migration is still above its 2010–2019 average.

   Result: 74,284, an index of 170 against that average. The wave fell 60% from its peak and did not stop.

2. 2.

   Building has overtaken population growth · Holds

   It fails if people added per home started in 2025/26 is at or above the 2010s average of 2.38.

   Result: 1.61.

3. 3.

   Rents show it first · Holds

   It fails if asking rents rose from a year earlier in either city.

   Result: Calgary −6.4%, Edmonton −2.5% in Q2 2026. Alberta rent CPI −2.3% against all items 3.6% in September 2026.

4. 4.

   Receded, not stopped · Holds

   It fails if net migration in the first two quarters of 2026 is below the same quarters of 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

   Result: 24,445 against 18,384 in 2019, and a 2010–2019 average of 24,349.

5. 5.

   Builders are pulling back · Holds

   It fails if starts so far in 2026 are level with or above the same months of 2025.

   Result: −12.7% over nine months, still the second-highest such total on record.

6. 6.

   Finished homes are piling up · Holds for houses only

   It fails if finished, unsold new homes are not accumulating.

   Result: Unsold houses in Calgary and Edmonton rose to a record in April 2026 and have eased 10.1% since. The series counts single- and semi-detached houses only, so it cannot test the row and apartment supply that made up 64% of the record.

7. 7.

   “Alberta built the housing it needed” · Does not hold

   It fails if homes started since July 2021 fall short of population growth at the 2010s ratio.

   Result: Short by about 72,000 starts province-wide. By city it is mixed: CMHC finds no measurable gap in Edmonton and a remaining one in Calgary.

8. 8.

   The next check · Pending

   It fails if CMHC's October 2026 rental survey, released in December, shows Calgary's vacancy rate below its 2025 level of 4.9%. That would weaken the reading that rents are where the build shows first.

   Result: Not yet published.

Reading it back

What the record can't yet say

Show the work

Method, sources, and what this page can't do

1. 1.Resale and MLS® prices (unavailable) — There is no legally reusable resale or MLS® price series for Alberta. The two authoritative ones — CREA's MLS® HPI and the Teranet–National Bank HPI — both prohibit commercial use and derivative works. What is shipped instead is the New Housing Price Index, which covers NEW homes only, roughly a tenth of transactions. Neither this page nor any chart on it shows the price a reader would be quoted by a realtor.
2. 2.Raw land, farmland and residential acreages (unavailable) — No free, commercially licensed price series exists for raw land, farmland or acreages in Alberta. The NHPI 'Land only' component shipped here is a builder's serviced-lot cost inside a new urban subdivision — it says nothing about a quarter-section outside Airdrie. Farm Credit Canada's Farmland Values Report is the only plausible route and its reuse terms have not been verified.
3. 3.Commercial and office vacancy (unavailable) — No open commercial vacancy, lease-rate or absorption series exists for Alberta. Every source is a proprietary brokerage report, and they disagree with each other by around ten percentage points on downtown Calgary in the same quarter.
4. 4.Tenure of new apartment supply (partial) — The dwelling-type series in starts.json cannot distinguish rental from condo. starts-by-market.json closes most of this gap using table 34-10-0152, which carries the intended market at time of start for Alberta from 1988. What remains unmeasured is the secondary rental market — rented condos, basement suites and single-family rentals — which CMHC's rent and vacancy surveys exclude entirely and which is large and growing in Calgary.
5. 5.Unabsorbed inventory for Alberta as a province (partial) — No Statistics Canada or CMHC table publishes unabsorbed inventory for Alberta as a whole. inventory.json ships Calgary and Edmonton, which are current to the latest month, plus a seven-centre historical sum that ends in 2022 because the smaller-centre table stopped being published. Neither is a provincial total.
6. 6.Unsold and unleased apartments (unavailable) — The only open unabsorbed-inventory series (34-10-0149 and 34-10-0150) counts single- and semi-detached houses and nothing else: its total equals those two types exactly. Finished apartments that have not sold, and new purpose-built rental units still leasing up, are not measured by any open monthly series, so the apartment end of the record supply can only be read through vacancy and rents.
7. 7.Alberta-level completions and units under construction after 2022 (partial) — Every Statistics Canada / CMHC table carrying Alberta-level housing completions stopped publishing after 2022 — the annual table ends in 2022, the quarterly table in October 2022, the monthly tables in December 2022 — and Alberta under-construction stopped in 2002. Starts remain current to the latest month. Because the page's argument is about the LAG between starts and completions, this matters: recent completions are shown for the Calgary and Edmonton census metropolitan areas from table 34-10-0154, about 70% of the province's population, and must be labelled as two cities rather than as Alberta.
8. 8.Anywhere outside Calgary and Edmonton (partial) — Provincial Statistics Canada series cover all of Alberta, and CMHC's rent survey reaches about thirty Alberta communities, but vacancy, rents and price indexes are effectively a two-city story. A two-city finding should not be called 'Alberta'.

• ·CREA — MLS® Home Price Index and benchmark prices — Terms forbid any commercial use of the content, directly or indirectly, and forbid use of results, graphs or charts derived from it for resale or commercial distribution. terms
• ·Teranet–National Bank House Price Index — Licensed for non-commercial personal use only; derivative works prohibited. terms
• ·Local real estate boards (CREB, REALTORS® Association of Edmonton, AREA) — Republish CREA-family MLS® data under the same commercial restrictions.
• ·Commercial brokerages (CBRE, Avison Young, Colliers, Altus, Barclay Street) — Proprietary. Their downtown Calgary office vacancy figures also disagree with each other by roughly ten percentage points on the same quarter, so no single figure is 'the' number.
• ·Alberta Land Titles / SPIN2 — Pay-per-search under a tariff schedule, no bulk export, no redistribution rights.
• ·Alberta economic dashboard table BldgPermits_34100066 — Serves current data under the name of Statistics Canada table 34-10-0066, which has been inactive since October 2023. Citing that table for this data would be false. Building permits are excluded from this page entirely; starts are the cleaner measure. terms